White House has no contigency plan for DADT: ‘we expect the Senate to act’

A White House spokesperson told The Advocate Wednesday evening that administration officials “expect the Senate to act” on repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell” when they return from the midterm recess for the final days of the 111th Congress.

The statement, which placed the responsibility for repeal squarely on Senate leadership, was a follow up to a question asked earlier this week about whether the White House was making any “contingency plans” in the event that Congress fails to pass the National Defense Authorization Act to which the repeal measure is attached.

The White House acts as if the President has no role in passing legislation. And, on the Defense Authorization bill containing the DADT language, the President played no role. He didn’t call one Senator.

Not sure how why they’d expect things to be different in the lame duck session — after Dems. suffer electoral losses.

Here’s the full statement:

The President has repeatedly said he wants a lasting and durable solution to DADT, and he continues to believe that the Senate should follow the bipartisan action in the House to repeal the statute. The White House continues to work with the Congressional leadership on a host of issues that need to be addressed when they come back into session, including passage of the National Defense Authorization Act. We are not commenting on contingencies if the Senate does not act because we expect the Senate to act – it is the right and fair thing to do and it is in the national security interest of the country for it to get done.

I would like someone at the White House to define the term “continues to work” — because, from every indication, there hasn’t been any real work.

Someone at the White House should be thinking about contingencies to end DADT discharges. In the State of the Union, Obama said he would end DADT this year. Jim Messina said the same thing a couple weeks ago. This statement from Shin Inouye doesn’t inspire much confidence.